“The Western’s grand and forbidding geography, which threatens to swallow up or destroy the individual and “civilized” norms, is easily decoded, reinterpreted, and reapplied across cultural and national borders.“
Fronteras: Congratulations on your new book. You offer a panoramic view of the place of the western in Mexican popular culture, while at the same time doing a deep dive into the subject, all in the space of 250 pages. Our first question is this: the western is viewed as a quintessentially American art form, which calls to mind such iconic actors as John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks. Yet its appeal transcends national boundaries. Mexico, Spain, Italy and Germany have all had an enduring love affair with the American West, contributing to the genre with a variety of cultural products. Broadly speaking, what do you think accounts for the international appeal of the western?
Dr. Conway: I’m continuously surprised by how popular Westerns are around the world. For example, I was recently looking at an old issue of Life magazine from the 1960s and saw a photograph of a Nigerian cowboy “club” performing a shoot-out on the streets of Lagos. To answer your question, I would argue that the use of landscape in U.S. Westerns universalizes the genre, making it appeal to different storytelling traditions. The Western’s grand and forbidding geography, which threatens to swallow up or destroy the individual and “civilized” norms, is easily decoded, reinterpreted, and reapplied across cultural and national borders. The same could be said about the genre’s elemental stories of good and evil, and colonialism and resistance. You can make a recognizable Western about anything, in any culture.
Fronteras: It’s clear from your analysis of Mexican western films and comics that both cultural products are not simple facsimiles of their American counterparts, but are in dialogue with them in all sorts of interesting ways. All the basic ingredients of the traditional western are in evidence, yet the authors of these products are engaged, consciously or unconsciously, in refashioning them to suit Mexican cultural sensibilities. Can you give us a few notable examples of this process of adaptation?
Dr. Conway: On the one hand we have pastiche Westerns which aspire to mimic U.S. Westerns, while on the other we have more hybrid adaptations that blend U.S. conventions with conspicuous Mexican references. Regardless of how the films or comics are coded, as pastiches or hybrids, they are always in conversation with Mexican culture, history, and politics. For example, my favorite Mexican film Western is Ismael Rodríguez’s Los Hermanos del Hierro (1961), an ambitious, existentialist film that in 1994 was voted by Mexican critics as one of the top twenty Mexican films of all time. The film deliberately riffs on scenes from the Hollywood classic Shane, as well as Noir Westerns of the kind that Robert Mitchum made in the late 1940s, like Pursued or Blood on the Moon. On the other hand, Los Hermanos del Hierro recreates themes, imagery, and archetypes that are deeply embedded in classic Mexican melodramas of the so-called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, as well as in mid-twentieth-century Mexican literature and philosophy. Specifically, I show how the film stages deterministic and culturally constructed arguments about Mexican psychology and the trauma of the Conquest that were dominant in mid-twentieth-century Mexico.
“The thematic obsessions of Mexican Westerns are Mexican. In my book I develop this argument on a continuous basis, to fashion a kind of cultural history of Mexico as told through Mexican Westerns.”
Fronteras: Historians of the Hollywood western are in general agreement that the genre derived much of its popularity in this country after World War II from a pervasive sense that the rise of the modern state had resulted in a loss of individualism, an idea that many believe is fundamental to their identity as Americans. The lone gunfighter and the cowboy on the open range became hallowed historical figures to a society that saw the West as a symbol of an idealized past, and the western as an antidote to the homogeneity of American life. Yet Mexico, throughout much of the post-war era, remained a predominantly rural society. There the forces of modernization moved more slowly, and did not directly challenge the national sense of self. Is it fair to say, then, that the appeal of the western in Mexico spoke to a different set of concerns?
Dr. Conway: Definitely. Different concerns. While Mexican Westerns on film and in comics utilized visual cues and poses that were immediately identifiable as relating to the Western, the themes of Mexican Westerns do not recreate U.S. arguments like Turnerian individualism or Manifest Destiny. The thematic obsessions of Mexican Westerns are Mexican. In my book I develop this argument on a continuous basis, to fashion a kind of cultural history of Mexico as told through Mexican Westerns. I first introduce it in my introduction through a comparison of The Magnificent Seven (1960) with a Mexican film called Los Cinco Halcones (1962). I show how the Mexican film deconstructs the individualistic and technocratic ethos of the Hollywood film, celebrates the Mexican state as a paternalistic benefactor of the Mexican people, and show how its plot and music dovetail with storytelling traditions related to the Mexican Revolution. (One of the arguments of my book is that makers of Mexican film Westerns have historically used the form of the corrido to validate the Mexicanness of their Westerns.) Beginning in the 1960s, Mexican film Westerns begin to break free of this transparent, pro-government messaging, and enter into a more nihilistic space.
Fronteras: Most people are familiar with spaghetti westerns; few are aware, though, that the Mexican film industry made its own contribution to the genre in the 1960s and 1970s. How do the films of Alberto Mariscal borrow from the work of Sergio Leone? How do they depart from the spaghetti aesthetic?
Dr. Conway: He borrowed close-ups from Leone, as well as his costuming style and arid settings. Mariscal’s films are pessimistic and often make overt references to Leone, such as shooting a key scene of El Tunco Maclovio (1970) in a cemetery, and having that film’s protagonist dress like Clint Eastwood. That said, I find Mariscal to be less playful and witty than Leone. He is more psychological and deterministic, and sometimes falls into crass exploitation. Mariscal’s work also has an unfinished and rough feel that does not track with Leone’s classics. I should also add that Mariscal was obsessed with remakes and homages of different kinds, not just Spaghetti Westerns. He remade the Mexican Western Los Hermanos del Hierro, and his film El Silencioso (1967) is a retelling of Shane (1953). His break-out Western, Todo por nada (1969) includes scenes that are clearly modeled on John Ford’s The Searchers (1956).
“One of my goals is to show that Mexican Westerns are not trivial, or “niche,” but visible, significant, mainstream, and historically significant.”
Fronteras: Let’s talk for a minute about comic books, which are the focus of a couple of chapters in Heroes of the Borderlands. In chapter five, you examine two enormously popular series from the 1970s, El libro vaquero, a series of stand-alone stories told in pocket format, and Aguila Solitaria, which chronicles the exploits of the last member of an unnamed tribe of Plains Indians. Written by Mexican authors using Anglicized pseudonyms, both draw upon conventional western tropes that would be familiar to American readers. Mexican characters, in fact, are generally absent in both series. Yet because the two comics feature issues of race and racial conflict prominently in their story lines, you argue that, viewed in tandem, they can tell us a lot about the complex discourse of Mexican national identity. Can you lead us through your argument here?
Dr. Conway: Both Aguila Solitaria, and El Libro Vaquero, one of the most successful Mexican comics of all time, are pastiches in the sense that they do not populate their pages with Mexican characters or settings. On a deeper level, however, I argue that both comics represent opposing viewpoints about mestizaje, each one with its own, specifically Mexican genealogy. The first is indigenist nationalism, as exemplified by the canonization of the aztec warrior as a symbol of resistance against the Spanish empire, and the second is the celebration of mestizaje as the fount of Mexican identity. I trace both of these concepts in art, literature, and politics, and link them to the plots and motifs of each comic. Aguila Solitaria is the indigenist case study while El Libro Vaquero is the mestizaje example. I think this chapter exemplifies one of the primary goals of my book: to take enormously visible examples of “low prestige” popular culture and show how they are embedded in broad, historical questions. One of my goals is to show that Mexican Westerns are not trivial, or “niche,” but visible, significant, mainstream, and historically significant.
“The calavera dimension of El Solitario clearly anchors the comic in Mexican culture in ways that relate to Santa Muerte and contemporary narcocultura…”
Fronteras: You close the book with a discussion of Santa Muerte, with its calavera/Day of the Dead iconography, which can be seen in some recent Mexican comic book Westerns. On one level, this is clearly an effort to “Mexicanize” the comic book western, but you caution against such a narrow interpretation. Why?
Dr. Conway: The chapter you refer to is about a comic called El Solitario, whose Mexican protagonist travels the Borderlands fighting against injustice and Anglo-American racism. The calavera dimension of El Solitario clearly anchors the comic in Mexican culture in ways that relate to Santa Muerte and contemporary narcocultura, specifically the concept of “desamparo” or abandonment that certain sectors of the Mexican population have experienced over the past few decades because of poverty and violence. Both Santa Muerte and the protagonist of El Solitario function as supernatural protectors of vulnerable Mexicans surrounded by a hostile and lethal environment, and the cowboy hero often appears in skull form, or associated with skull imagery. At the same time, however, I noticed how the back covers of the comic insistently and deliberately promoted homages to U.S. frontier history and legend, and Hollywood films. The French narratologist Gerard Genette once coined the word paratext to refer to those parts of a text that are outside of it while also being linked to it in a meaningful way. The front covers, back covers, and advertising that appear in a comic book are all examples of paratexts that need to be analyzed in relation to the actual story and art of the text. For these reasons, El Solitario is a great example of cultural hybridity.
Fronteras: So, what’s next on your research agenda?
Dr. Conway: I just finished an article on the representation of Black Nationalism and New York City in a landmark Argentinian graphic novel from the 1970s called Alack Sinner, and an essay on the psychology of masculinity in Mexican film Westerns. I’m also currently coediting two collections of critical essays. The first is with my UTA colleague Antoinette Sol, about comic book Westerns from around the world, and the other, with my friends Marek Paryz of the University of Warsaw, and David Río of the University of the Basque Country, is about the Western in world literature. Thanks for the interview!
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